The Data Briefing: Should US Federal Employees Become Data Science Literate?

The Data Briefing: Should US Federal Employees Become Data Science Literate?

The United Kingdom’s (UK) Digital Service has researched ways to increase data science literacy among the UK public service. Data science literacy goes further than data literacy, in that civil servants will know how to apply data science concepts and methods in their everyday work. I thought it would be useful to share the UK Digital Service’s findings to help federal government employees develop their data science literacy. Mohitchoudhary/iStock/Thinkstock Before discussing how to increase the data science skills of federal employees, let’s discuss why. On March 30th of this year, President Obama signed the Evidence-Based Policymaking Commission Act. According to the Office of Management and Budget: “The 15-member Commission is charged with examining all aspects of how to increase the availability and use of government data to build evidence and…